It’s essentially a sales pitch for business customers of IBM in which they use publicly available statistics to convince you they can help your business with social.

And maybe they can, but in truth, there are a lot of smaller, much more agile companies out there I would look to for social media analytics and guidance before I would chase Big Blue.

Here’s my analogy:
Would you ask a police detective or a local kid to find the thief who stole your bicycle? The detective would have all the ‘big picture’ answers on crime rates, lots of paperwork on the case, and sound like he is working on it. And yes, maybe he will eventually find the bicycle. Meanwhile, the local kid will give you a name and show you where the thief lives in about 15 minutes if you give him an ice cream… 🙂

Our three week online course is limited to ten (10) participants, and is designed to walk you through the history of social media, how to use the tools, and will provide ideas on how you can grow a social business. There will be a minimum of three live online chats with all of us together, as well as continuous contact and feedback on progress.

Participants in the course will also be able to participate in our upcoming Uptown #Learnsocial Time Crunch on Saturday, February 4, 2012 from 10 am – 2 pm. This special event is meant to make good use of your time to look closely at how you represent yourself online, how you plan to use social to grow your business in 2012, and connect you with others who can help mentor you throughout the year. The best part? This event is free for graduates and current students of the “Understand Social Business” course and will concentrate on the following areas:

• boost and enhance your online profiles,
• get honest critique and help improving your online social profiles,
• get answers to questions focused on personal and business use of social media, and
• refresh your headshot in a session with a photographer so you can refresh your online avatar (for a fee)

Course requirements

A decent comfort and ability to navigate and use the internet for daily needs.

Who teaches it?

Community Manager Mentors with demonstrated success and experience in building a network online and facilitating discussion and learning for others.

How hard is it?

If you can find what you’re looking for in an online newspaper or play a YouTube video, you’ll be able to work your way through this course.

How long will it take?

3 chapters planned for 3 weeks in total (15-25 hours).

Who is it useful for?

Entrepreneurs and business people, ideally those who can implement what they learn immediately in their businesses and functions.

There’s a basic understanding of what opportunities and risks social business creates that most people don’t yet understand. This course is meant to:

provide anyone in business with a good understanding of social business.

guide students through the creation of an online portfolio they can share to demonstrate proficiency.

To accomplish these goals, there are three main sections of the course, with live online class discussions, facilitated by the course mentor, after each section before proceeding to the next. This is a 3-week course that can be completed on your own flexible time (except for the 3 live discussions) in a total of 15 hours or 25 hours – depending on how far down the rabbit hole you wish to go with the recommended readings that support each section. The section titles are:

Chapter 1: How Did We Get Here? How Do I Start?

The impact and opportunities of social media, the importance of strong profiles and how to create them.

Chapter 2: How To Use the Social Media Tool Box

Overviews of the strengths and weaknesses of the main platforms for business: Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, and Facebook, as well as exposure to other useful tools. The lingo and behaviours found on each and how to get setup with these channels.

Chapter 3: How to Grow a Social Business

A look at all of the different operations inside a business and how social can have a powerful, positive impact on each. How to introduce these practices and tools to each function and exposure to analytics and driving business decisions based on powerful, live social data.

Trying to lure me to ‘liking’ or sign up by offering swag is a huge social media #fail. If your product is worthy, I’ll return/join/like. That is the essence of social media.

In response to my initial rant on this, a friend quite rightly pointed out to me on Facebook

“Keep in mind if it is worthy and swag is involved, then it’s just a plus ;)”

Indeed he is correct, but give me the swag and let me decide if you are worthy of coming back to like/register/join.

Example – In this particular case, what has me miffed was (yet another) ‘free’ eBook on a potentially interesting topic, which, may I point out that by requiring me to ‘like’ a page or register for a newsletter, is not truly free… Now, because I will not be bribed into liking or joining, I won’t read their eBook, so I won’t find out if they know what they are talking about and are worth more of my precious time.

The whole swag for likes/registering gimmick It is a failed tactic used by old-school marketers who really don’t “get” social media.

Rather than using social media the way it is meant – as a conversation with potential clients and others in their industry – they wrongly see it as just another pipeline to shout out their advertising.